From Deep Throat To Deep Doo Doo
February 10, 2007 at 12:42 am
Huge — maybe unprecendented — correction for the Washington Post on the front-page of Saturday’s paper.
First, here’s the first paragraph of Friday’s story that had everyone, everywhere talking:
Intelligence provided by former undersecretary of defense Douglas J. Feith to buttress the White House case for invading Iraq included “reporting of dubious quality or reliability” that supported the political views of senior administration officials rather than the conclusions of the intelligence community, according to a report by the Pentagon’s inspector general.
Now, here’s the fifth paragraph of Saturday’s story:
An article in yesterday’s Washington Post misattributed to the inspector general’s report critical comments about the Pentagon operation made by committee Chairman Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.). In a statement he released Thursday, Levin, not the inspector general, said the Pentagon effort used intelligence reporting of “dubious quality or reliability.” [See correction, A2.]
Bad day when you get stories about intelligence reporting wrong.
John Fembup said,
February 10, 2007 @ 10:26 am
Wait, wait -
So the Post originally reported that their source was an administration official?
And now it turns out their source was really a Democrat Senator?
This is even worse than getting the intelligence story wrong - which is bad enough.
The Post lied about its own sources (”misattributed” my foot!)
No liar only lies once.
goy said,
February 10, 2007 @ 10:34 am
Another suicide bombing by the WaPo.
And surprise! The hack who wrote this also gave us our first look at Joe Wilson’s lies about Niger.
One more wave in the relentless tsunami of deceit the exempt media has had aimed at the Bush Administration since the beginning of recorded history (i.e., the day Al Gore failed to carry his own home state in the 2000 election).
BTW, both of the links above point to the same place.
anonymouscoward said,
February 10, 2007 @ 10:54 am
Don’t be so hard on The Post.
It’s editors have been left to hang in the wind by the biases of their own reporters.
They should fire the %*#$ bunch of ‘em.
william said,
February 10, 2007 @ 11:34 am
Ditto anonomouscoward.
Richard of Oregon said,
February 10, 2007 @ 11:40 am
This is great! In just 24 hours, the retraction was made. I suppose that it would be too much to ask that we get a little more than “misattributed” as an explaination of how it happened. Not so long ago, there would have been no retraction. Maybe someday, editors can enforce standards that would make it nearly impossible for such a thing to happen.
Gabriel said,
February 10, 2007 @ 12:11 pm
The other half of this story is the comments section at the Washington Post. They are worse than DU. Honestly, it looks like the StormFront message boards on there.
richard mcenroe said,
February 10, 2007 @ 12:33 pm
Where was Bad Billy Rankin when we needed him?
tree hugging sister said,
February 10, 2007 @ 12:48 pm
That certainly wasn’t very intelligent of them.
May be Jon Kary kin halp thim ceep stuf strate.
Anil Petra said,
February 10, 2007 @ 1:24 pm
The Post can only aspire to match the checks and balances and quality control evident in the blogophere.
TallDave said,
February 10, 2007 @ 2:26 pm
Anyone else starting to wonder how big the intersection between DU/DKos and MSM actually is?
It’s getting scary out there. Even when they’re called on this stuff, I don’t sense any regret.
Kit Winterer said,
February 10, 2007 @ 3:06 pm
Do they even have editors? If not, admit it and fire reporters; if so, fire editors. Either way at least WaPo need not wonder about why they’re lost the trust of their readers. . . which other stories were not so easy for everyman to investigate? A paper whose ‘news’ is bogus isn’t very valuable.
Rich said,
February 10, 2007 @ 9:02 pm
Seems the NY Times has the same slint http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/10/opinion/10sat1.html
I wonder if there will be a corrections from them
Jack Lacton said,
February 11, 2007 @ 2:07 am
My view on corrections is that it should be part of the media’s license to publish the correction on the same page, in the same font size as the original mistake. That would stop the deliberate mistakes that misguide people with the correction on page 23 in 4 point font.
aaron said,
February 11, 2007 @ 7:32 pm
Jack, I agree. I wonder if Kevin Drum has a policy like that?